Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1887-10-06

only should the team rest while eating
at noon. but its harness should be re.
morved. and the animals placed in
darkened stalls where flies will MOI
annoy them. At this time the farmer
himself may indulge in little reading.
He will be less tired and tagged out
than at night, and the change from
thought to mutual labor and vice versa
will reinvigorate both body and mind.
There are no evenings for farmers
until quite late in the Fall. aud the
necessary reading to keep up with the
news Of the day can be better done at
noon than at any other time in the day.
GARDENING BY THE BARREL.
The agricultural editor of the Phila-
delphia Record mentions Jerseyman's
practice which enables him with very
little extra outlay to secure better re-
suits, especially in season of drought,
than from three times US much space
devoted to the vegetable growing in the
old way. He procures old soap-boxes.
four-barrels, kegs, or anything that
will hold earth or manure, and IL the
boxes or barrels be somewhat rickety,
so much the better. In planting mel
ons, cucumbers, tomatoes, squashes, or
lima beams he places a box on the
middle Of the hill. which should be six
feet across, fill it half full of fresh ma
nure, and over the manure O half peck
of n mixture of wood ashes and super
phosphate is placed. The seeds of the
melons are planted around the box.
four plants being allowed to the hill,
the distance of the seeds from the box
being about two feet, rs too close con-
tact with the box is not desirable.
When the young plants are up soap
suds are poured over the contents of
the box. In few weeks the roots of
the plants will have reached the box,
and they are then freely aud literally
supplied with all the moisture and liq-
uid manure they may need, as water is
poured in the box rs often as may be
desired. In dry weather a bucket of
water in the box causes the matter in
the manure to leach out, and it soaks
into the ground around the box. where
the plants appropriate it.
DAT sTBAw FOR STOCK.
In long series of oxper ments con-
corning the feeding value of oat straw,
Prof. Sanborn of Missouri says that
this straw is mainly valuable rs heat
and fat producer. 1t does not produce
much fat, because cattle will not eat
enough of it. 1t contains but IA per
cent of digestible albumenoids, or
flesh formers, and forty per cent. of
digestibc carbohydrates, or fat form
ers. Hence TO use it with advantage
and get the full benefit of it, it must be
fed with II food of directly the opposite
kind. such rs oil meal or cotlon-seed
meal, The professor found that thirty
ty-four pounds of oat straw and SIX
pounds of cotton-seed meal gave the
same results rs fifty pounds of hay. be-
cause cotton-seed meal has 1872 per
cent. of albumenoids and but 17.6 per
cent, OF carbohj drates, thus forming.
with n straw. a wcll-balanced ration.
Oh meal contains 27.6 per cent. of
albumenoids and twenty-seven per
cent. of carbohydrates, so that n pound
more of oil meal than cotton-seed meal
should be fed. The cost of this feed as
wit !, l,n, -
fourth of Il cent per pound, is an i'm
portant question. 1t is said to take
twenty-five pounds of it to make steer
gain pound day, or st cents daily
10 keep Inn in good growing cond.
ton. But if by feeding four pounds of
oil meal, worth / cents per pound,
the same gain can be made. and by
feeding proportonately less amount
we can keep up the weight. t will help
out short crop of hay. But to the
farmer who has not and can not get
oil meal the following facts will be of
value: Clover hay contains about nine
per cent. of albumeuoids. timothy con-
tains 5.S, and oat straw IA per cent.
therefore it will be seen that a ton of
clover hay fed with ton of oat straw
will be equal in value to two tons of
timothy, because clover hay contains
an excess of albumenoids, and it is
waste to feed it by itself, as it is waste
to feed out straw alone. A steer feed
on the straw long enough would starve,
but when fed with clover it is a we'll
balanced ration, and makes a poor hay
crop go much further. 1t is clearly eS-
tablished that the food value of DAT
straw can be obtained only by feeding
with something that has an excess OF
albumeuods and dctic ency of carbo-
hydrates. The farmers food of this
class is clover hay.